Chapter 9: Essential Workers and Their Families
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2-2026
Editor(s)
R. A. Lenhardt and Nancy E. Dowd
ISBN
9781479833320
Publisher
NYU Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
This chapter considers the way the family and household was exceptionalized in the early response to COVID- 19.1 The exceptionalization of the family mirrored a longer history of the privatization of the family and household in state public health response. The impact of this exceptionalization shaped the lives and families of essential workers who faced repeated exposure while at work to the virus that causes COVID. These essential workers were largely racial minorities and often lived with their families, in kinship networks, or in housing arrangements that mimic households to facilitate their employment. The racial dimensions of the erasure of the home in the public health response are clear in the early data on COVID, which showed that Black, Native, and Latinx individuals were contracting COVID and dying of the virus at higher numbers. We argue that the obfuscation of the home in the public health
Recommended Citation
Aziza Ahmed & Jason Jackson,
Chapter 9: Essential Workers and Their Families
,
in
Centering Families of Color: A Reimagination of Family Law
151
(R. A. Lenhardt and Nancy E. Dowd ed.,
2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4208
